Campari Soda or Count Your Blastings

    The road to Tanger Med

Aside from a quick jaunt from Manitoulin Island to Tobermory and a quick transit from Vancouver to Victoria I've only had a notable trip on a ferry once before. 

Cyd, Darby, Owen and I took the Magic Bus from London to Athens in...1978? Which necessitated a 'brief' ferry ride across the channel. I was feeling pretty chuffed about the beginning of my great adventure so immediately upon dropping our bags I headed to the bar and ordered what I probably thought was a sophisticated European apero. I swiftly downed a Campari and soda as we growled out of port on the flat water of the channel. Moments later we encountered the 'real' channel waters. Picture a Brahma bull in exquisitely slow motion. What began as a slight queasiness progressed rapidly to full-blown full-blowing. I leaned out over the rail portside. The frigid, stinging spray from the Channel waters would have felt refreshing and enlivening if they didn't reverse the direction of my spew. Douche de Campari and whatever I had eaten previous to embarking was both humiliating and disgusting. Not a recommended facial treatment. As might be expected I have never had a taste for Campari from that day to this. After decanting the entire contents of my gut from stomach to nether orifice I slumped with exhaustion against the sickly grey-green wall of the deck. Owen suggested my face was indistinguishable from said wall. I smiled grimly. My further memory of the trip only recommences upon arrival in Paris in the early Paris-blue morning, franc-less and starving. It doesn't really belong to this narrative but I have a strong memory of stepping into a cafe, (after having begged an ancient French lady for a few sous and unbelievably receiving 5 Francs!) and as I preparing to order a cup of coffee and a croissant (in my mangled high-school French) an elderly French gentleman hove up beside me and said with a distinctly Parisian growl, coloured by years of smoking Gitanes, 'Verre du vin!' It was 6am. I thought: I'm in France!

Yesterday we arranged to take a ferry from Tangier City center to Spain but the weather in the channel is so rough today that we had to take a taxi further east so that we could cross directly from Tangier Med to Algeceiras Spain. You can see Spain across the water. It looks tantalizingly close. And yet...

One is not allowed to bring Moroccan money into the country nor depart from Morocco holding their currency so we made an effort to spend as much of our dirhams as we could. As fate would have it, because we hadn't anticipated a taxi ride to the distant port, we spent our very last dirham traveling here. Here we sit with empty pockets and empty stomachs.

Or as Calvino would have said. 'Here we sit picking our teeth'

As we sit in the embarcation room awaiting our cross-Gibralter ferry I am experiencing some apprehension. I ate several hours ago and will refrain from repeated behavior regarding ingestion of classy cocktails.

   Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar

This blog entry will be a two-parter. The denouement will follow briefly.... Martian selfies??

   Luckily we didn't need this.

Pt 2

Well, totally antilcimatic my friends. My hours of dread were all for naught. The passage across the Strait of Gibraltar was completely uneventful. Although it was a little bit rolly at times I was on a much larger boat and experienced no gastrointestinal complaint. That being said, it was a frustrating day. Instead of leaving at 12:00 a.m. our ferry finally departed at around 4:30 p.m. and an anticipated 1 hour trip was actually closer to 3 hours. From the port at Algeceiras in Spain we had to make our way to Malaga which is about a 2 hour bus ride. We had a lot of difficulty finding an ATM that would recognize our card etc etc. 

   The famous rock - sunny days?

Suffice to say that we finally arrived in Malaga at midnight - that was a long, long day. The great news is that Malaga is a lovely city. I'll write a whole blog about the way that they have managed their infrastructure to make it very accessible. Toronto, or any Canadian city for that matter, you could take a page or two out of the way that Malaga has redrawn itself. It's full of Roman ruins and Picasso museums (his birthplace) and beautiful streets and plazas. Our shoulders have dropped about 3" from the stress that we were experiencing in Morocco. Sorry Morocco. And we are imminently on our way to find some much anticipated tapas. The wine, of course, is delicious. And the breakfasts are sublime. I had absolutely no complaint about Moroccan coffee but it's equally great here and the pastries? Died and gone to heaven. Now I'm mangling my Spanish so, two points for that. I have been watching some Spanish dramatic series on Netflix to try to train my ear but although I'm a bit better at comprehension it's not nearly enough.

   Malaga streets are beautiful, especially       in the rain. Our Airbnb on this calle.

More to come...